A well-designed building works on many levels. It looks good and feels good. It meets its owner’s functional needs, reflects regional vernacular style, and fits into the neighborhood. And if it’s totally working, it expresses the designer’s worldview.

Just such a home stands along a dirt lane off of Corrales Road, north of Albuquerque. At first glance, the not-so-big rectangle with a corrugated metal gabled roof, plastered with a deep brown mud, could be a historic New Mexico adobe. Yet this modest new home may well be a model of resource and energy efficiency for the 21st century.

Certainly for Ted Owens, owner and builder, it is the culmination of years of work and several passions—for solar energy, for simple, elegant design, and for creative media-making. His resulting labor of love is a finely crafted 830-square-foot home of timber, straw bales, adobe, and stone that is powered by the sun and collects and stores its own water supply.

 

 

A design generalist with an emphasis on appropriate technology, Ted has designed film graphics and solar ovens and consulted both on small homes and multimillion dollar structures. He worked successfully in the Los Angeles arena, designing and directing video and multimedia documentaries and corporate image projects for architectural firms and corporations. But something was missing.

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